What Room for a University Church?

If we ask the question 'In a Twenty-First Century University, What Room is There for a University Church?' there are no foregone conclusions. There is no agreed answer to the question 'What is a 21st Century University?', and in a university it is by no means agreed what, if anything, is the place of a University Church. Study universities today, as I have done for some years, and the first thing that appears is that there is little discussion, and little agreement, about what a university now needs to be. And you need not go far to find people who actively disparage the role of the church in a college. When a college chaplain recently explained his role to a college fellow - 'I take over half of the Dean's work' - the fellow retorted, 'Well, that's half of nothing!'

All that notwithstanding, for some group of people to hold, embody, deepen, drive forward and spread such wisdom as is available to human beings - all these for the sake of achieving a fuller life for all people - has been inestimably important over the centuries. Societies have been deeply dependent on such groups: it is not for nothing that so many of the 'groups' or colleges we have here in Cambridge have had the patronage of the royal and the powerful, and that the University depends so much on the government.

Although it is easy to forget it, it has also been important for the knowledge gathered by such to be held together by reference to its originating source and its final goal; that was what made knowledge into wisdom. Whether related to the nature of the world, to human history, to human reason, to social life and to culture, or to the future, human knowledge and practice always needed to begin from - and be checked by - what is the deepest and final truth of everything. That was what turned the human quest for knowledge into wisdom. That is what is expressed so beautifully in that reading from Isaiah, when all the struggles of Israel are seen as God's own life:

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the LORD has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.

Hence, it is not irrelevant that the University itself was gathered around this Church, that many of its earliest members were sent by religious orders, and that colleges have their chapels. A university organized as collegial searches for earthly knowledge which becomes wisdom from God, which brings the flourishing of humanity, is visibly embodied in Cambridge, both in the University and in the colleges.

All this is an idyllic portrait of Cambridge, but for a good long time it has been evident that the reality is a good deal different. In beginning as I did, saying that groups of people have held, embodied, deepened, driven forward and spread such human and godly wisdom - for the sake of achieving a fuller life for all people - I was a bit cagey about who these 'groups of people' would be. What counted in the early days, and for centuries after, was the success of groups gathered in a very few places like Cambridge; and they worked by force of attraction, attracting the best of the day. During much of history, and certainly for a long while from the 19th through much of the 20th century, there were also commonly agreed ideas about what higher learning was: it was research-based learning, not for anyone but for those who would serve in public institutions and advance society (government, the professions and the Church); and usually universities were the 'groups of people' who met the criteria supplied by these agreed ideas.

But there have been major shifts, two in particular: (1) Now there is no agreed conception of what is needed, by whom it is best provided, and for whom it should be intended: these are the topics in which discussion and competition go on now. If the task is holding, embodying, deepening, driving forward and spreading such wisdom as is available to human beings, for the sake of all human beings, who does this, and what do they do? (2) Now who decides these things is also an issue; discussion, competition and decision goes on both within society at large, and universities must respond as best they can. In an infinitely more complex world, largely controlled by governments and powerful commercial interests, they tend to be the ones who decide what is the task and who should be given resources to undertake it. Those who decide often have a different 'take' on what needs to be done, and who can do it best. And in this game, the wheel spins and does not necessarily land on universities: it may be on other government-funded institutions, or on research and development departments within corporations or 'outsourced' by them.

The result is a complex array of conceptions of what is needed, who should do it, and for whom. And that large vision - holding, embodying, deepening, driving forward and spreading such wisdom as is available to human beings, for the sake of all human beings - splinters into many fragments, each tended by different groups, with different expectations as to what they should do.

Universities are amongst the few remaining places - the churches are another - where, at least in theory, the whole vision is undertaken. And not even all of them would undertake it; many have more limited visions of themselves. There are significant limitations from which they suffer, five of which I will mention.

(1) By long habit, they are driven more by separate quests for specialized knowledge achieved by methods of distillation and concentration than by a wider coherent vision of wisdom available to human beings, for the sake of all human beings.

(2) The natural tendency for wisdom to expand is severely limited by the resources available. We would expect the growth in wisdom to be recognized and extra staff and funding provided to develop it further, but there is always a ceiling on what can be done; many academics exhaust themselves in trying to expand wisdom.

(3) The priorities are elsewhere: the development of wisdom is sacrificed to its spread through teaching. Government nowadays aims to give higher-level education to as many people as possible, and that limits the expansion of wisdom.

(4) And - in the extraordinary 'appraisal regime' to which universities are now subjected - the use of efficiency-tests tends to confine research within narrow areas where results can be delivered quickly, to make the separate quests into 'bore holes' an inch wide and a mile deep. That is often how 'excellence' is understood.

(5) Lastly, universities operate on a shoestring. Government funding does not provide either adequate salaries or enough funding for research, and universities or their departments are forced - where they can - to turn to another sector of society, to find and court commercial partners. If that is the dominant source of funding, however, the fundamental task of universities will be skewed: holding, embodying, deepening, driving forward and spreading such wisdom as is available to human beings, for the sake of all human beings will be limited to contract-funding for special purposes. Have you ever tried to blow up one of those sausage-like balloons, where when you blow into one end only one part of the balloon inflates? What results from commercial connections is that parts of universities will be over-inflated, and others under-inflated; the danger is that the commercially-connected parts can dominate the others: 'who earns the money calls the tune'.

Don't mistake me: I would not want to disparage any of these. They are simply the realities of the situation: universities must make their way within competitive government financing and within the possibilities offered by a commercially driven world. But they do show the preeminent feature of the 21st Century University: it is what can be negotiated, from within and with its companions, government and the commercial sector. Much as they dislike it, it demands that academics learn to deal with the realities of the time in which we live.

Yet, to do so without entering into Faustian bargains is an important issue for them. Somehow, they must preserve the wholeness of their vision - of holding, embodying, deepening, driving forward and spreading such wisdom as is available to human beings, for the sake of all human beings, but within the realities of our time. To withdraw into a cocoon of reading and writing books is not an option: to be 'good as gold and fit for heaven, but of no earthly use' is not enough. But selling one's soul for worldly success is always the threat involved in facing the realities of our time.

Here is the fundamental challenge for the 21st Century university. Let me put it this way: amidst the extensities - all the possibilities within the university and in relations established with outside interests - in which its people must chart their way, they must always pursue the intensities which are inherent in their vision, what confers wholeness of understanding and life, and genuinely contributes to the long-term good of society. Yet, with all the anxieties about how to continue, these intensities are most under threat. That is where the deepest vocation of the 21st century university coincides with the deepest vocation of a university church.

Though I won't rehearse them now, a church has its own versions of the problems which afflict a university. In an increasingly complex world, it often loses its way: though in the English constitution it is part of - not separate from - society as a whole, and exists within and for society, it is increasingly unsupported by society as a whole; and it struggles over what should be its priorities. It has a divided mind about how to respond to this situation: should it be detached and confrontational in its proclamation of what is said to be 'Gospel' truth and morality, or should it be world-involved and attempt to embrace all? It seems to me that these alternatives - like their counterparts in a university - are potentially idolatrous. And the difference between them - which quickly brings conflict within the Church - now threatens to destroy it.

Surely, however, if we have the wit to discern it, the way forward lies beyond the two alternatives which face both university and church: dis-involvement in the name of truth on the one hand, and on the other hand obsession - even Faustian bargains with - embracing all the variety of interests in the world. What lies beyond such alternatives is that wise kind of life which holds, embodies, deepens, drives forward and spreads such wisdom as is available to human beings, for the sake of all human beings, within the realities of our time.

It is in the struggle for that wise kind of life for the future of all human beings that the vocation of the 21st Century University and the vocation of the University Church meet. And they can help each other in the struggle, not by relying on outworn suppositions about how they differ, the one in a secular purpose and the other in a religious one, but by complementing each other in the struggle to find how the world - as it moves from and to its fullest source in God - is found and re-found in the complex situation in which we find ourselves. People at Great St. Mary's are inclined to look back to the 'great days' back in the 1960s, when vibrant discussions filled the Church. And it is commonly supposed that those days happened because of charismatic leadership and speakers. I think not. It was because University and Church were meeting in the struggle to find the way forward, by looking deeply into the nature of human understanding and how it is related to the deepest forms of theological awareness. That is what is needed again now.

Now, of course, the issues are different. Let me just mention two of the most important. (1) For one thing, as colleagues of mine put it, 'the secular experiment' - in which it was the norm for the world to be known only by reference to itself - has been shown to be a failure; it has thinned down all the ways by which we may see how things are related. Common life has been dissolved into separate interests. Now we recognize that the world is secular and religious, not only because of the religious motivations which are so obviously at work in most issues in the world today, but also because so many of the quests of modern intellectual life have religious roots and goals, even if they are well-hidden. How the churches will respond, and patiently help with the recovery of these roots and goals, is the question. Can they stop their short-sighted squabbles and get on with this task? Can they learn to talk with, not at, people as intelligent and well-motivated as are most Cambridge academics? Their position is not assured: it too must be negotiated.

The other is this. (2) The ways in which the great religious traditions work are not as simple as so many people have thought. For example, it is an outworn idea that they can be compressed into a few ideas which are to be believed and applied, or into simple practices of embracing others. To be religious is more like being bathed in light from an infinitely intense and deep source, in which we are transformed to a fuller life together. Separately and - more helpfully - together, the great traditions are now re-learning what it is to be religious, as Jews, Christians or Muslims, and how that joins them together in new ways. That puts the religious traditions in a new place vis-à-vis the university, as together they may explore the infinite light as it transforms all learning and life for the future of human beings together. Can all - the great religious traditions and the university - join in this hope and this exploration? Is the 'room for a University Church' in the 21st Century University that it is a space - and a time - in which this hope is offered and this exploration hosted, a space and time in which Church and University can join in finding and offering the wisdom which will bring true fullness of life to all people? This may happen. Whether it will, we will have to see.

Amen.